Point of sale terminals, such as cash registers or self check-out terminals, generally provide customers with records of their transactions. The records may be either viewed on a display device or provided to the customer in the form of a paper receipt. Paper receipts are not very convenient because they are easy to misplace and are difficult to organize. Moreover, paper receipts may accumulate in one's pocket or purse and become more of a nuisance than a convenience. Furthermore, it may be difficult to search and sort paper receipts.
Other solutions in the prior art involve providing customers with digital receipts. Unlike paper receipts, digital receipts may be sorted and organized. In some systems for providing customer's with digital receipts, the customer carries a receipt card provided by a receipt card company. When the customer makes a purchase at a merchant point of sale terminal, the merchant identifies the customer using the receipt card. The merchant then establishes a communications link with the receipt card company and the digital receipt is transferred to the receipt card company over the internet. The customer can then view the digital receipt at the receipt card company website. In other systems, once the merchant identifies the customer, the customer can then specify a location to which the digital receipt may be sent. For example the digital receipt may be sent to a web address, a cell phone, or a personal digital assistant (PDA).
The digital receipt solution may prove impractical because it may require the merchant point of sale terminal to interface with a receipt card company or with a customer specific location. Yet, some merchant point of sale terminals may not be able to interface with a receipt card company or with a customer specific location (e.g. the point of sale terminals may not have internet connectivity). Also, digital receipts from different merchants may have different formats and may be encoded in different protocols. Therefore, even if the digital receipt is received by the receipt card company or the customer specific location, it may be difficult to analyze and read the digital receipt. In order to overcome these problems, each participating merchant may be required to incorporate various hardware and software modifications in order to standardize the interface between the many merchant point of sale terminals and the receipt card companies.